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The Harrow Technology Report
Insight,
analysis, and commentary on the
Copyright © 2001-2005, Jeffrey R. Harrow. All rights
reserved.
Of
Things Very Large,
Listen to this Issue.
Storage Update -
Changing ALL The Rules?
A MUCH Smaller
Sea-Change.
There's MUCH More I Can Do For You!
Weather Control --
It's Still Sci Fi, But....
If The Shoe Fits...
Listen to this Issue.
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Storage Update - Changing ALL The Rules?
"In a keynote speech to the [recent World Wide Web conference in New York], Microsoft's head of research Rick Rashid described what consumers might do with a terabyte of data storage that costs around $1,000, and is capable of holding more than 1 trillion bytes of computer data. 'You can store every conversation you have ever had, from the time you are born to the time you die,' Rashid said. A person could have a snap picture with a 180-degree fish-eye view of one's surroundings for every minute of every day for the rest of one's life. Microsoft researchers in the United Kingdom have built prototypes of such a life-recording device called SenseCam. They are gearing up for a second generation of photo capture systems no bigger than a necklace pendant, Rashid said. 'Obviously this raises a whole lot of issues about privacy and the control of one's personal information,' Rashid said. 'But this is where we are going. It's already the case that kids are walking around with cameraphones taking a lot of pictures. This is just an extension of that,' he said."
Forbes.com What's fascinating to note is
that we can, just three months later, ALREADY
purchase Rashid's terabyte of storage for LESS
than his "$1,000." As we recently found out
(www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/ So Rashid's exploration of the potentials, and of course of the very significant security and privacy implications of such "24x7" life recordings, are already becoming relevant, and that should soon offer both fascinating and scary results. It also strikes me that current laws that define where and when it is (and is not) legal to record conversations or other interactions with people are going to have to change; these new technologies and capabilities were never envisioned when the laws were written. Yet as with any new technology, the potentials are both negative and positive -- perhaps with such 24x7 recordings, I'll finally be able to win some of those arguments with my wife! J
But This May Soon Be 'Small Potatoes!' Because if patents owned by the president of Colossal Storage Corporation, Michael E. Thomas, pan out, we may have not one, but 100 terabytes (that's 100 TERAbytes!, or ten-thousand gigabytes!) on a $45 removable 3.5-inch disk! The drive will cost about $650. In five years. If this happens, blow me away. Thomas' technique is,
unsurprisingly, just one of the first fruits of
nanotechnology - an orchard of which are just
waiting to bloom. Specifically, from an Aug. 11,
2004 article in PhysOrg.com
(http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:Kz11ff3COzgJ "Michael invented and patented the world's first and only concept for non-contact UV photon induced electric field poling of ferroelectric non-linear photonic bandgap crystals, which offers the possibility of controlling and manipulating light within a UV/Deep Blue frequency of 1 nm to 400 nm." The technique is called "3D Volume Holographic Optical Storage Nanotechnology," and uses a series of "programmable molecular lenses" that can manipulate light - not at the 700 nanometer wavelength of the red lasers used by current CD and DVD drives, and not even at the 450 nanometer wavelength of the new blue lasers that will enable somewhat greater DVD storage (such as BluRay's 50 gigabytes) -- but at the 50 nanometer wavelength of ultraviolet light whose photons, along with an appropriate electric field, can turn "molecular particles of an atomic size" into the basic one-or-zero switches of digital storage. At 100 terabytes to the 3.5-inch disk. On top of that incredible density, the data is stored holographically (in three dimensions) on the optical media, which enables: "...reading and writing billions of bits [ten terabits/second] at one time in Volume (x,y,z)." You can find additional detail at the first links in this section, plus at Colossal Storage's site at http://colossalstorage.net/ .
But Even This Is JUST The Beginning! Because we will ALWAYS want and need more storage, driven by the incredible amounts of data that we're now generating. Taking just one example of this trend, from the April 15, 2004 Corante Tech News (http://www.corante.com/brainwaves/archives/005568.html), "Up to now the biggest numbers game in biology had been run by the publicly financed Human Genome Project, which sequenced each of the three billion letters in the DNA code for a human being. "I know a neuroscientist who downloaded the Human Genome Project onto an Apple iPod," says Mark Boguski, an M.D. and Ph.D. who is a veteran of that project and who now directs the Brain Atlas Project at Allen Institute for Brain Science. "But that was [only] 3 gigabytes. And we will be producing petabytes (3 million gigabytes!)" Yes, your brain is very complex and this is why neuroinformatics will keep information technology vendors busy for many years to come."
Exercise Appropriate Caution, Of Course. As exciting as such improved storage will be, especially considering the vast number of totally new applications that will arise from such fast and dense storage, we should remember that there's often a very wide gap between the laboratory and the marketplace. Even though Thomas has been granted (and has licensed) an impressive list of patents in this area, and even though an international 'who's who' set of labs are "...continuing to verify and prove Colossal Storage's Patented nanoTechnology" (http://colossalstorage.net/mainFrame1.htm), there's never a guarantee of commercial success until it happens. On the other hand, sometimes it does work out, "changing all the rules" of how we live, work, and play. Don't Blink!
A MUCH Smaller Sea-Change.This is an article that I originally wrote for Control Magazine (http://www.controlmag.com/ct/index.html). Now that it's been published there I'm pleased to also be able to share it with you here. Control systems drive actuators of various designs. Some control thousands of amps of electricity, some trigger minute current flows that cascade through computerized pathways, while others drive robots that build things. But the one attribute that most of these control systems share is that they work with tangible, "holdable," macroscopic things. That, however, is about to begin to change. The emerging science of nanotechnology works with things at the unbelievable scale of a few billionths of a meter (nanometers). For comparison, a typical bacterium is about 1,000 nanometers across, while the smallest virus particles measure 20 nanometers. A hydrogen atom stretches 1 nanometer. And research scientists are now building incredible things at this scale of atoms and molecules. Consider this older work, where Kanji characters for the word "atom" are made up of dots -- each dot a single iron atom!
Construction Robots. But that is "old stuff" compared to what Sandia National Labs is now doing -- they've created a robot. That doesn't sound particularly groundbreaking -- until you realize that this robot, complete with feet and a prehensile tail to enable it to move around, is a single molecule called a "motor protein!" Voila - one step towards being able to construct and control things at the atomic and molecular level.
Or, No Robots Needed! Another, perhaps more interesting way of building things at the nanoscale is called SELF-assembly, where chemical reactions cause atoms and molecules to automatically come together in the desired configuration. Researchers at NASA and USC have recently developed specialized molecular memory out of nanowires that are 10 nanometers in diameter and 2,000 nanometers long, which they convinced to spontaneously form. Then, in a subsequent process of dipping the nanowires into a special solution, they caused each nanowire to self-assemble different layers upon itself that created molecular transistors along the wire. In fact, these molecules were rather special transistors. Most typical transistors can define two states - OFF or ON (zero or one). But these nanowires transistors can assume one of eight states, allowing each transistor to hold three-bits of data rather than the traditional one-bit. That trick further improves the storage capacity of this already ultra-dense memory to, potentially, 20 gigabits per square centimeter! A further improvement is that, unlike traditional DRAM memory which "loses its mind" every few milliseconds and so requires constant power-hungry refreshing, this nanomemory has proven stable for as long as 600 hours before needing to be refreshed. Another benefit of self-assembly is that, unlike the energy-intensive manufacturing techniques that we use today to layer and carve-out transistors on chips, building things UP from atoms generates little waste and takes but a fraction of the energy. (See here and here for additional info.) In another direction, researchers are co-opting and learning from the techniques that Nature has thoughtfully laid out for us. As described in an April 22, 2004 National Science Foundation press release, Duke University's Ashutosh Chilkoti and his team have used an ink made from enzymes to carve 400 nanometer wide troughs on a silicon chip without the heat, energy, and time required by traditional methods. You can find additional insights here. A different approach towards self-assembly is to use the stuff of life itself, DNA, to perform complex processes. According to Ehud Shapiro of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science in the April 24, 2004 CNN.com: "...[DNA computers] harness the software-like ability of DNA strands to store information. Enzymes "read" chemical sequences on the DNA in a way that allows the computer to perform calculations." And these are but the tip of the nanotech iceberg. Federal funding is expected to reach $1 billion in 2005, while private funding may exceed that level of investment.
The Bottom Line. Nanotechnology is a technological race that, when won, promises to have far more of an impact on how we work, live, and play (especially in the medical/surgical fields - click here), than the semiconductor and "computing" revolutions of the past 35 years. As these technologies mature; as the things we build shrink to nanometer sizes and create machines like the Sandia robot, and as self-assembled drugs become the norm within just a few years, the challenge on how to control (and keep control) of the processes and the environment will be substantial -- and different from the challenges and solutions of today. Remember -- the best relay-logic designer had little value to offer once the microcontroller took over, unless she looked in new directions... That's every business's challenge. That's YOUR challenge! Think small. And again, Don't Blink!
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You may not realize it, but there's much more to The Harrow Group than just "The Harrow Technology Report." For almost twenty years, as I've been sharing my research on the ever-faster-moving and converging technologies that are changing how we work, live, and play, I've also been working directly with businesses and organizations, large and small, to help them understand and address how these changes may affect them, their customers, and their customers' businesses, through a series of:
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Weather Control -- It's Still Sci Fi, But....This is an article I've recently written for Future Brief (http://www.futurebrief.com/). Future Brief is a site from New Global Initiatives (http://www.ngiweb.com/) that offers brief summaries and other resources to help people, especially those on The Hill who form national policy, to keep up on technological innovations -- but with an added twist. Future Brief "takes one step back and looks at the greater convergence of the accelerating changes in science and technology, with the equally rapidly accelerating changes in society and politics." (http://www.futurebrief.com/about.asp)
That oft-vaunted idea of controlling the weather -- its one science fiction topic that (unlike so many others) remains firmly beyond our control. We and our technologies remain "puny" compared to the energies of atmospheric circulation, sunlight, oceans, and the other forces that drive the chaotic global environment. Indeed, when MIT PhD student Ross Hoffman attempted to seriously study weather control for his thesis, his advisor called the project "too outlandish," and unlikely to generate the funding that the study would require. So Hoffman did what any good innovator does -- he listened to the experts' "can't do it" advice, and then happily proceeded to garner a half-million dollars from NASA spin-off NIAC (NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts - http://www.niac.usra.edu/). NIAC specifically focuses on 40-odd year out "outlandish" ideas that just might change our world. According to the May 7 Wired News (http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,63362,00.html), Hoffman's research has indicated that by heating a small area of the atmosphere a few degrees, it may be possible to alter the path of hurricanes (particularly appreciated as this 2004 hurricane season progresses). Also perhaps of tornados. And it may also affect other previously unassailable weather phenomena. The payoff from that could of course be huge, saving the loss of life and the tens of billions of dollars of destruction that typically accompanies such nasty "heat engines." But an "electric heater" is a wee bit too small to make a difference at the scale of heating an appropriately-sized packet of atmosphere. So Hoffman envisioned a ring of solar-powered satellites that would convert energy into 183 gigahertz microwaves, and beam them to just the right small area where his software predicts that a little heat will go a long way towards altering a storm's course. Specifically, from the
description of his Phase II NIAC study
(http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/ "The key factor enabling control of the weather is that the atmosphere is sensitive to small perturbations. That is, it is the very instability of the atmosphere’s dynamics that makes global weather control a possibility. Certainly realistic numerical weather prediction models are very sensitive to initial conditions. Extreme sensitivity to initial conditions suggests that small perturbations to the atmosphere may effectively control the evolution of the atmosphere, if the atmosphere is observed and modeled sufficiently well. The architecture of a system to control the global atmosphere and the components of such a system are described. A feedback control system similar to many used in industrial settings is envisioned. Although the weather controller is extremely complex, the realization of the required technology is plausible in the time range of several decades. A
critical concern is the feasibility of the required
perturbations. The Phase 1 research
(www.niac.usra.edu/files/ The Phase 2 research will refine this approach, making the results more realistic, and translate the required perturbations into requirements for a fleet of solar reflectors in orbits close to the plane of the terminator, as the physical controller. These requirements, in turn, will be used to estimate the area and hence the mass which must be stationed in orbit. In addition to being directly relevant to the call for revolutionary concepts which expand our vision of the future, many of the technologies involved in our proposed system are areas of interest to NASA that will be developed for other reasons. These include atmospheric science, remote sensing, aviation systems, fleets of low-cost satellites, solar power satellites, advanced computational systems, mega-systems engineering, and more." Additional insights into
Hoffman's work are available in a slide show at
http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/ Of course this is still unproven technology, and it will likely remain so for decades. Yet it IS a foot in the door for future research towards a laudable goal.
The Thing Is... The thing is, though, that while such capabilities would surely have its benefits, some obvious challenges lay ahead. For example, might this additional heat upset other elements of our global environment (the "if a butterfly in the Amazon flaps its wings..." syndrome)? To me, the most interesting (and potentially the most explosive) fallout of such a technology might be less about the global environment, and more about the political environment. Imagine if a country with these capabilities alters the path of a storm threatening their coast, and it eventually ravages another country? Even if there was no objective proof that the path-alteration affected the outcome, there would certainly be suspicions -- and that could make for some all-too-interesting political "discussions..." Similarly, what might happen if an attempt to keep a storm away from, say, Houston, failed to do so? Where might liability issues come to rest? Who would the insurance companies sue? And of course, the specter of abuse is always, hanging over our heads, as depicted in this lead-in from a fanciful January 1, 2100 New York Times article in Hoffman's paper: "A new system of weather modification satellites, designed and launched at immense cost and still not in full operation, has been repeatedly diverted for personal uses by politicians and senior officials in the Weather Administration, an investigation by The New York Times has learned..."
Not To Worry! Happily (or not, depending on how you choose to look at it), this isn't something we'll have to worry about for quite some time. Nevertheless, this does offer an easy-to-contemplate template through which we can consider other, shorter-term technological, social, and ethical effects that will be raised by our increasingly powerful technologies -- such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, and genetically engineered foods, flowers, and yes -- potentially people! We don't have answers, yet. But NOW is the time for thoughtful discussion and contemplation. NOT after these various cats get out of their bags. Once again, Don't Blink!
If The Shoe Fits...
Finally, nanotechnology holds great promise on almost all fronts of human endeavor, from materials sciences through new health technologies and, perhaps, even human augmentation. But as valuable as these billionths-of-a-meter particles may be, they do represent a new class of manufactured "things" that bear cautious study to prevent unintentional harm. For example, as a kid I remember going to the shoe store and routinely having my feet X-RAYed in new shoes to assure their fit -- they didn't know at that time that repeated exposure could be harmful. Now, we want to be sure that we don't make similar mistakes with nanoparticles. It's very early in this process, but Gunter Oberdorster, a professor of toxicology and director of the University of Rochester's Medical Center, offers preliminary information from an early study in the April 7, 2004 CNET News (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-5186939.html): "...One study [showed] that inhaled nano-size particles accumulate in the nasal cavities, lungs and brains of rats. This sort of particulate buildup could lead to inflammation and the risk of central nervous system disorders, researchers say. Oberdorster's study is scheduled to appear in the May issue of Inhalation Toxicology. 'I'm not advocating that we stop using nanotechnology, but I do believe we should continue to look for adverse health effects,' Oberdorster said." Like Oberdorster, I'm certainly not suggesting that we "halt nanotech" -- just the opposite. And we should remember that these early results are far from conclusive. Yet this is an important reminder that, as we increasingly find ourselves breaking "outside the box" by working directly with atoms and molecules, the potential for great good, as well as great harm, do coexist. It's imperative that we apply appropriate cautions now, so that nanoparticles do not represent the next "X-RAY in shoe stores" debacle.
About "The Harrow Technology Report".
"The Harrow Technology Report" explores the innovations and trends of many contemporary and emerging technologies, and then draws some less than obvious connections between them, to help us each survive and prosper in the Knowledge Age. "The Harrow Technology Report" is brought to you by Jeffrey R. Harrow, Principal of The Harrow Group. http://www.TheHarrowGroup.com . Where To Find "The Harrow Technology Report:"
Copyright (c) 2001-2005, Jeffrey R. Harrow. All
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